The good news is that Google still makes insane amounts of money. That is also the bad news.

That dichotomy hangs over the first-quarter results reported late Monday by
Alphabet Inc.,
GOOGL 1.73%
parent company of the internet giant. Against what seemed like a low bar, the company’s results largely beat Wall Street’s targets despite a sizable jump in spending. Advertising revenue, which still accounts for 86% of the core Google business, jumped 24% year over year to $26.6 billion. That is the fastest rate of growth that business has recorded since 2011, when it was less than half its current size.

It also is more than double what
Facebook
is believed to have generated in ad revenue for the same period. But don’t expect Google to tout that fact too loudly; the company has largely escaped the withering public scrutiny that has fallen upon its Silicon Valley rival of late. But that may only be temporary. The business of selling targeted advertising through free internet services accessed by billions of people has come under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators. Some of Facebook’s problems may be unique, but new regulations are unlikely to spare the biggest player in this business.

Google’s other challenge is the many billions it must spend to maintain the scale that has become its key competitive advantage. Capital expenditures for the first quarter soared to a record $7.3 billion—nearly triple what the company spent a year ago—in part due to a $2.4 billion outlay for the Chelsea Market building in New York City. And nearly 5,000 employees were added during the quarter, including about 2,000 stemming from its purchase of
HTC’s
mobile-handset-design operation.

Alphabet’s stock has risen barely 2% this year and trades at 22 times forward earnings, excluding nearly $109 billion in net cash. That looks cheap for a huge business still delivering solid double-digit growth. But for investors, Google’s many unknowns still aren’t clicking.